Industry

Technology services

Culham Centre for Fusion Energy operates JET (Joint European Torus) – Europe’s flagship fusion facility and the only machine capable of significant (multi-megawatt) fusion power. It also operates MAST, the UK’s innovative fusion device, which promises to bring down the cost and scale of future reactors. These devices and a highly skilled staff of around 500 give CCFE a unique capability in fusion research.

CCFE contributes to most of the key areas of study in magnetic confinement fusion research. Main research activities at CCFE include:

Experiments on the MAST spherical tokamak

Participation in the JET research programme

Design and upgrade of JET and MAST systems

Studies of the materials and design of the technology needed in ITER and fusion power stations

A theory and modelling programme which studies key areas of plasma physics and predicts performance of future tokamaks such as ITER

CCFE staff have a broad range of capabilities developed through many decades of fusion experiments and operation of numerous experiment devices, culminating in JET and MAST. CCFE staff are also engaged with the next generation machines – ITER which is being built at Cadarache in the south of France, and DEMO which will be the first power-producing demonstration power plant.